All posts tagged Reshma Sohoni

While accelerators like to see themselves as mini-business school programs, taking in fledgling startups and passing out fully-formed businesses, it is hard to get away from the impression that a large amount of what goes on is some sort of financial matchmaking.

A panel of three leading European programs, Reshma Sohoni from the London-based Seedcamp, Jon Bradford, formerly of Springboard, now running the London end of U.S.-based Techstars, and Kadri Ugland, co-founder of the Tallinn-based Gamefounders, a specialist accelerator aimed exclusively at gaming startups, all agreed that what separated one program from another was the quality of mentorship they afforded.

An accelerator is a program whereby startups typically, although not always, exchange a percentage of equity in their company for a cash injection to join a formal training scheme often that takes place in managed office space. According to Ms. Ugland, in gaming other deals apart from an equity stake were often struck, so for example revenue shares on future games.

In return for the funding startups get access to mentors to help them build the company and at the end pitch their company to an invited audience of investors, a sort of financial speed dating.

Apart from the money, why join a program? It comes down to two things.

Seedcamp, one of Europe’s most well-known Internet accelerators, celebrates its fifth anniversary and to celebrate the management team has released a flurry of statistics.

The headline figures are below and you can read more about it on the official blog, but it is worth having a look at what Seedcamp has achieved in half a decade.

Seedcamp is an early-stage seed investment fund and mentoring program. It holds events around Europe and invests in the winning teams, offering €50,000 ($65,000) for 8-10% of the company.

According to co-founder Reshma Sohoni, one of Seedcamp’s biggest successes has been to help companies based outside Europe’s big tech centres—London, Berlin, Stockholm etc—to get publicity and profile.

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Tech Europe covers Europe’s technology leaders, their companies, and the people and industries that support them — and their ideas. The blog is edited by Ben Rooney, with contributions from The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires.